In an email sent out to TrustedReviews, the network issued a formal apology and backed this up by the promise to ramp up speeds across both its 3G and HSDPA offerings:

"The vast majority of our 3G customers are able to access the internet on their mobile device at speeds of up to 384 KBps or typically up to 1.3 MBps if they have an HSDPA-enabled device," it expained. "The O2 network is fully HSDPA-enabled and we will be further increasing the maximum speeds available on HSDPA throughout the year, up to 7.2 MBps.

Because of a provisioning error, which came to our attention last week, a small proportion of our 3G customers have not been getting these higher speeds. We apologise to those customers who were affected. The issue is simple to fix and we will be doing so this week. If customers still have problems after that, they should call O2 in the normal way."

Many will rightly point out that this error shouldn't have happened in the first place, while cynics will believe O2 deliberately planned to get away with such a scheme for as long as it could to save bandwidth.

Will the moves be enough to land O2 the impending 3G iPhone? We'll soon know...